Free Your Mind

To be a true Supernanny, one must have an active imagination. Luckily for my charges, my creative and whimsical impulses have not faded since childhood, if anything my imagination has only become more vivid and lively. I remember the way I used to think about things as a child, mostly because I have never stopped thinking that way.
I found myriad methods of use for my imagination. It could be used to escape dull periods of the day or embellish playtime. Sometimes it could even help abstract or complicated concepts become more relatable and personal- spirituality for instance. At St. Patrick’s School, by first grade I was told all about Guardian Angels, that they were with us at all times, helping us make the right choices, an invisible friend with our soul’s integrity her sole concern. Immediately I began creating a persona for my guardian angel. If I was going to be spending every minute of every day with this being as my sidekick, I intended to make her awesome. I settled on Morgan, a grey unicorn I’d read about in a book of the Serendipity series, though modifications were made. My guardian angel Morgan was a girl, not a boy, and was a Pegasus as well as a unicorn, and -owing to the fact that I was an avid swimmer- was underwater optional, her back legs capable of morphing into a fin when wetted. My imagination came in very handy in the development of my faith, and ideas that may have seemed absurd to someone else, for me were comparatively standard.

My Guardian Angel, Morgan

Take the concept of heaven for instance. For those trying to wrap their hands around the idea I offer the advice, “Think bigger.” Big Cat and I were talking about heaven and he was concerned that people in heaven might miss other people who weren’t in heaven yet. This reminded me of a conversation I had with my sister, Laurel that began with her expressing concern that, “If heaven is for eternity, what happens when you run out of fun stuff to do?” Her honest question was adorable. Oh, Big Sissy, how much you have to learn. I do not often get the chance to best Laurel in the brains department(she is now a brilliant pediatrician), so I tried not to be too condescending when I explained, very slow-ly to her that heaven is a perfect place, where every soul is perfectly happy. If you’ve done all of your favorite things, God will erase your memory so you can do them all again. (In my personal version of heaven God will make it so I have never seen Animal House, Super Troopers, or Scarface, so I can see them all again…for the first time.) Which brings me back to Big Cat’s query. “What if not everyone you love is in heaven when you are there?” I took the time to explain to him that in heaven time can be sped up so that everyone you want to be there will be there and -if the time machine is on the fritz- in the meantime you will be doing all of your favorite things, and not worrying about anything you worried about before you got there. “Why not?” To which I theorized that the thoughts you had pre-heaven stay on Earth and only your happiest, best thoughts make it to heaven. He seemed satisfied with this answer, and so we bowed our heads… and continued coloring.